In 2000 I returned to Montana after four years overseas and tried to access my old haunts in the mountains. To my surprise, I kept running into gates and blocked roads.

In the latter part of the Clinton administration, the Forest Service began closing or obliterating roads throughout the national forest system, arguing that they didn't have the money to maintain them, or that they were detrimental to wildlife and the environment.

Is this still going on, or have conditions improved in the last two years? Seems to me this is an attempt by the environmental lobby to close off the land to everyone but the granola-eating backpacking crowd.

Hey now, I eat granola and I have a backpack. Not terribly fond of the greatful dead though.

In CO, public access roads to public land has always been an issue, I went to a DOW meeting last year where several people were complaining about such and such unit being hard to get too. DOW said it was lack of money.

However, I was not aware of this becoming worse so in the last few years, but I do (vaguely) remember some talk about the roads not being maintained because of environmental concerns.

Hey Bit - the granola eaters Ex is talking about all live in Boulder! They're the ones that get on TV and tell us all to live 'as one' with nature! And yes they've been active in getting roads closed off for many years. The Colorado back country is a lot less accessible now than it was 25-30 years ago. As Ex pointed out this is unfortunate for the folks that are unable to hike in. Even mtn bikes are prohibited from many areas, they're considered a motor vehicle.

What I'd really like to see is a class action suit filed by handicapped sportsmen claiming that the road closures violate their rights under the Americans With Disabilities act.

That certainly would put an interesting twist on access versus environmental "pureness". If the disabled one the suit, I guess it would mean that access to forests is fundamentally a service of the government. I wonder which side the ACLU would take...

In the darkness, the hunter stumbles through the underbrush, making noise and leaving his scent seemingly EVERYWHERE!
Daylight will be here in 30 minutes and he wanted to be in the stand an hour before daylight.
"I know I left that stand RIGHT in this area last night," he mutters under his breath, "but where is it now?"
He traipses back and forth in a zig zag pattern, getting himself overheated and sweaty, but never finding the stand he left there the previous evening – and eventually sits on a...